Tag: Nicholas Long

The recently suspended Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, David Crompton, joined the police service in 1982. He is the son of Sir Dan Crompton, a former Manchester officer who later became Chief Constable of Notts Constabulary.

Crompton senior topped up his post-retirement pension by serving with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, a sinecure which is now most noted for him describing Hillsborough justice campaigners, in writing, as ‘vindictive, vexatious and cruel’ as a result of them opposing the appointment of Norman Bettison as Chief Constable of Merseyside.

15,000 Liverpool people, led by the indomitable Sheila Coleman, signed a protest petition – and it has never been clarified whether those scandalous words applied to the entire throng. For more background on the disgraceful conduct of Crompton Snr, and sight of a copy of that shocking letter, click here.

Crompton junior, a public schoolboy educated at fee-paying Bury Grammar School, and later a geography graduate of Salford University, was always going to have advantages not open to, shall we say, an ordinary bobby. He rose to the rank of Chief Superintendent in Greater Manchester Police, during which time (in 1994) he graduated through the Common Purpose programme, and transferred to West Yorkshire Police (WYP) in 2004, taking up the role of Assistant Chief Constable.

At that time, WYP was embroiled in a huge corruption scandal that was being investigated by neighbours, North Yorkshire Police, under the codename Operation Douglas. Crompton seems now, with hindsight, to have been a highly appropriate choice to assist in the orchestrating of a cover up in which no WYP officer, out of the eighteen that were identified as committing serious criminal offences, was ever prosecuted. Indeed, it is true to say that not one criminal in uniform even faced a disciplinary hearing.

Lord Justice Simon Brown, in a withering Supreme Court ruling, described some of those offences by West Yorkshire Police officers as part of the worst prosecutorial misconduct he had ever encountered by a police force. A full report on Operation Douglas can be found here.

David Crompton became Deputy to the infamous Bettison in 2006 after the disgraced knight returned to policing following a two year sabbatical at CENTREX, an ACPO-funded police training organisation. Crompton’s other failings, apart from Operation Douglas, some of them equally disastrous, in those WYP roles, before and during the Bettison years, are covered elsewhere in some detail by uPSD (click here).

Given what was already known about David Crompton, his father’s callous attitude towards bereaved Hillsborough families, and following the disastrous tenure as an ACPO ranked officer at WYP, it would strike the independent observer as incredible that he could ever be chosen to lead a police force, even one as thoroughly discredited as its South Yorkshire neighbour.

But South Yorkshire Police (SYP) had become desperate by the Spring of 2012, having first advertised the post of Chief Constable the previous Autumn, at the time of the departure of the now disgraced, Meredydd Hughes (pictured below). That initial selection process resulted in all the candidates, including Crompton, being rejected as not good enough.

A second attempt to hand over the poisoned chalice was undertaken and Crompton applied again (he was, according to a well placed source, being plugged for the role by Labour Party contacts close to the appointing body, South Yorkshire Police Authority). Two candidates came through this renewed process, including Crompton (even though he had been passed over first time around), but once Stuart Hyde withdrew his candidacy to take up the Chief’s role at Cumbria Constabulary, SYP and Crompton were stuck with each other.

Some may even say, deserved one another.

Meredydd Hughes giving evidence before the Home Affairs Select Committee in September, 2014. By the end of the session his reputation was in tatters.

One of Crompton’s very first acts, as a newly promoted Chief Constable, was to try and bury a perjury/perverting the course of justice complaint against one of his own South Yorkshire road traffic officers, PC 480 Gary Garner. Aided and abetted by his Head of Professional Standards, DCS Neil Jessop, who was one of the on-duty Hillsborough officers referred to the IPCC in September 2012. Jessop was, however, allowed to scuttle off into retirement in February 2013, even though his 30 years service were not completed until three months later. This neatly avoided any awkward questions over the Hillsborough cover-up, but would not protect Jessop if a rigorous criminal enquiry was instigated over the Garner cover-up.

The intended victim of the frame-up was none other than the author of this piece, Neil Wilby. But the Crown Prosecution Service withdrew the charge against him, less than a month before the intended trial date. There was no longer a realistic prospect of a conviction grounded in Garner’s deliberately false evidence. But pursuing their police officers for perjured CJA Section 9 witness statements – and prosecuting them – is not how things work in South Yorkshire Police, as Hillsborough and Orgreave justice campaigners well know.

Notwithstanding, of course, the comment attributed to Crompton in this BBC piece: “I think that if people (police officers) are shown to have acted criminally then they should face prosecution”. Click here to read full article.

Crompton himself was under investigation by an outside police force – supervised by the IPCC – at the time of publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report (12th September, 2012). This investigation had commenced in May 2012 and followed discrimination allegations made against him by no less than the former Legal Services Director at West Yorkshire Police, Ajaz Hussain. A fact Crompton conveniently forget to mention to reporters, TV crews and millions of readers/viewers around the UK, and beyond, on the fateful day that the truth emerged about the sheer depth and reach of the Hillsborough cover-up.

Crompton is now famously exposed by the Daily Star as needing ‘a hug and re-assurance’ from ACPO’s Sir Hugh Orde on the day the Panel Report was published. It might have been said a bucket of ice cold water to wake him up would have been more prescriptive. Crompton didn’t even know who Margaret Aspinall was, until Mark Thompson, the now-departed Head of Media at SYP reminded him: “David, she’s chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group. She lost her 18-year-old son James in the disaster.” Readers will draw their own conclusions from that gaffe.

In February 2013, even worse emerged when Crompton was forced to apologise as emails, that he had tried desperately to conceal from public view for months, were forced into the public domain. He accused one of the campaign groups representing Hillsborough families of “lying”. He made the comments in the offending email four days before the publication of the Panel report in September 2012. He said the families’ “version of certain events has become ‘the truth’ even though it isn’t“.

Crompton has not specified what falsehoods he was referring to and has consistently refused to make himself available to answer any further questions. Which is typical of the man known as a “walking disaster” at West Yorkshire Police.

In that particular round of correspondence, Crompton emailed the force’s Assistant Chief Constable Andy Holt (also ACPO lead for football policing matters), and Mark Thompson (see above) on 8th September 2012, four days before the HIP Report was released. The offensive email was ordered to be disclosed by the then South Yorkshire Police & Crime commissioner, Shaun Wright, following a Freedom of Information request by the Daily Star’s Jonathan Corke. The game was up for Crompton as soon as that decision was reached.

The Police Commissioner said the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Home Secretary, Theresa May, had both been informed of the existence of the email and Wright was “disappointed at the use of such languaged” by Crompton. IPCC Commissioner Nicholas Long concurred – and noted that the content of David Crompton’s email was “at best ill judged, and at worst offensive and upsetting”

In the email, Crompton asked for a meeting with Holt and Thompson to discuss launching a web page about Hillsborough, with links to documents. Including previous apologies and memos. He continued: “We then publicise it on Twitter. In effect, it amounts to the case for the defence. One thing is certain – the Hillsborough Campaign for Justice (sic) will be doing their version…..in fact their version of certain events has become ‘the truth’ even though it isn’t“. A quite astonishing passage in the light of subsequent revelations and jury determinations at the new Hillsborough inquests.

Three days after the publication of the HIP report, during which the Prime Minister apologised twice for what the bereaved families, and survivors, had suffered at the hands of South Yorkshire Police, Crompton made his now infamous ‘The Cupboard is Bare’ statement, concerning what had already been disclosed to the Panel, exclusively to a local newspaper (click here to read the full article). Subsequent events showed that Crompton had lied to the Sheffield Star (as he set out to deceive throughout almost all of his WYP tenure) as revelation after revelation emerged about what had not been disclosed to the Hillsborough Independent Panel by South Yorkshire Police. A situation that was to repeat itself during the IPCC’s two year scoping investigation into events at the Orgreave coking plant in June 1984 and the fitting-up of striking miners with false criminal charges arising from events of that fateful day – and beyond.

The Orgreave miscarriages of justice were referred by Crompton to the IPCC in November 2012, following a David Conn piece ‘Hillsborough and the Battle of Orgreave: One police force, two disgraces’ that appeared in The Guardian (click here for full story), which then led to a BBC Inside Out documentary outlining the criminality of South Yorkshire Police officers (click here).

In fairness to Crompton, he was a beat bobby in Manchester when the criminal acts by SYP officers at Orgreave (and in other mining communities) took place. He was, however, in charge of the force when the IPCC complained publicly, more than once, about their scoping investigation being obstructed by SYP’s failure to release all relevant documentation.

At the outcome of the IPCC’s exercise it was very clear from their two reports that serious criminal offences were disclosed (read full IPCC reports here). Instead of arrests and charges being brought against the mainly senior officers responsible, Crompton ducked in behind the quite incredulous line peddled by the IPCC: The offences took place too long ago and it’s not proportionate to deal with the perpetrators through the criminal justice system. The unspoken proposition being that if a police cover-up can be kept going long enough no officer will be charged at the end of it.

Also laid bare was the lie that Crompton told the whole country in September 2012 when he said anyone guilty of a criminal offence should be prosecuted. Orgreave justice campaigners are presently awaiting news from the Home Secretary as to whether she will order a public inquiry, following a recent meeting with her in Westminster.

Andrew Norfolk – award winning journalist at The Times newspaper

The Rotherham child sex abuse scandal had already been broken open by The Times’ Andrew Norfolk (pictured above) in the same month as the Hillsborough truth day – and it was to reveal a scale of police incompetence, indifference and, in some cases downright wickedness, exhibited whilst hundreds and possibly thousands of young girls were being raped, trafficked and tortured.

What the The Times investigation was also to reveal, once more, was the permanent mindset of the already discredited chief of South Yorkshire Police. David Crompton immediately tried to downplay the piece and sought to discredit Norfolk’s reporting, which has, of course, subsequently received universal acclaim and won many awards.

Crompton’s November 2012 letter to Home Affairs Select Committee can be read by clicking here. In it, Crompton falsely and, it is believed deliberately, claimed that the problem of children being systematically raped was nowhere near as extensive as had been claimed in the newspaper reports and he, further, attached credence to a 2010 co-agency child sex exploitation report, in which South Yorkshire Police were key stakeholders. This ‘whitewash’ has subsequently been entirely discredited by first, the 2013 Jay Report (read here) and later, the 2014 Casey Report (read here). Both of which were hugely critical of the roles of South Yorkshire Police (and Rotherham Council).

The criticisms were not confined to historic events either that, in theory, would leave Crompton, largely, in the clear. The condemnations of the police inaction, up to the time of writing of both reports, were both stinging and relentless: Crompton’s force was still badly letting down victims, long after he became Chief Constable.

He has made two subsequent appearances at the Home Affairs Select Committee when his evidence has, at best, appeared unconvincing and, in places, hopelessly inadequate. These dressings-down by the cross-party panel of MP’s have led directly to the National Crime Agency being appointed to take over primary responsibility for child sex investigation in South Yorkshire – and indirectly to an external inspection of the force being ordered by the Police and Crime Commissioner, Dr Alan Billings. It is, therefore, safe to say that Crompton has lost the faith and trust of his masters – not to mention victims and the wider public – to be able to deal effectively with the protection of children on his patch.

The hardworking and inspirational Rotherham MP, Sarah Champion, also has very little faith in Crompton as she rounded on him as recently as February 2015 in this Helen Pidd interview in The Guardian. Miss Champion didn’t mince her words and accused the Force of “crass policing” when dealing with CSE victims (full Guardian piece here).

For those that have the time, and the specialist interest, the full portfolio of The Times investigations into grooming and child sexual abuse, spread over five years and across into many areas of the country, can be read by clicking here. Whilst the shocking and wilful negligence, and seeming complicity in child sexual exploitation, by South Yorkshire Police looms large – other forces such as Thames Valley and Greater Manchester also fare badly. The latter, of course, one of the other forces scrutinised by Neil Wilby and uPSD.

Turning attention back, specifically, to Crompton, he is not only incompetent and dishonest, proven many times over, he is also incredibly thick-skinned (or possibly just thick) and largely indifferent to criticism, in whatever form that arrives. He also cares little for the feelings of victims, or for public opinion. Despite his constant bleating to the contrary.

A vivid demonstration of those characteristics came in August 2014 when he recruited his old West Yorkshire Police chum, Ingrid Lee, as an Assistant Chief Constable. Lee has three major claims to fame in her policing career: none of which look too attractive in the cold light of day. During her tenure as Head of Organised Crime in WYP, her team managed to have £3.5 million of Class A drugs (cocaine, heroin and cannabis largely) stolen from their property and exhibits store at the showpiece Carr Gate complex in Wakefield. These drugs were then recycled back on to the streets of Leeds and made the thieves, which included one of her own detectives (DC Nick McFadden), around £1.8 million in cash.

Incredulously, after he was first arrested, McFadden was offered a plea bargain, sanctioned by Lee, that if he admitted to theft by finding (he had claimed he found a bag with a large quantity of cash in it by the M62 motorway) then no drugs, or money laundering charges, would be brought. He would get a sentence of 4 years, rather than the 23 years in prison that he actually received.

Another former member of Lee’s aptly named Organised Crime Group found himself in jail soon after. This was long serving Detective Sergeant Chris Taylor, who was sentenced to three years in prison for his part in the infamous multi-million pound Muldoon timeshare fraud.

Lastly, but most crucially, Ingrid Lee was the subject of derision in every national press and broadcast outlet following her disgraceful Operation Newgreen report which ‘whitewashed’ West Yorkshire Police’s role in allowing Jimmy Savile to evade capture for almost fifty years, during which time he was regularly sex offending against children in and around his home city of Leeds. It was an astonishingly inept piece of work, dishonestly grounded – and a kick in the teeth for Savile’s many victims. Why then, did David Crompton, just months later, pick Lee as a member of his Command Team and then earmark her for a role as CSE spokeswoman for the Force?

It is almost as if he is mocking child sex abuse victims.

Ingrid Lee – her infamous Operation Newgreen report made her a laughing stock

In September 2014, just a month after Ingrid Lee (pictured above) had joined the SYP team, Crompton was in hot water again with the Home Affairs Select Committee. This time a bungled house raid of pop star Sir Cliff Richard‘s home in Sunningdale, Berkshire which was filmed throughout via helicopter and ground cameras and broadcast live by the BBC.

It was a hapless freak show organised personally by Crompton and his Head of Communications, Carrie Goodwin, who is another ex WYP recruit to the Crompton ‘gang’. Goodwin, incidentally, was part of the WYP Comms team that put out the infamous Sir Norman Bettison ‘blame the Liverpool fans’ press release which, indirectly, led to Bettison leaving the police service six weeks later. (Miss Goodwin is also responsible for recruitment of a SYP Hillsborough PR specialist on £45,000 pa, who worked for three months and spent the subsequent nine months on sick leave).

Cliff Richard has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. He was interviewed by the police ten days after the televised, five-hour trawl of his property in connection with an offence that took place 30 years ago and 160 miles away. Keith Vaz, on behalf of HASC told Crompton that he, and his police force, were guilty of ‘sheer incompetence’. The beleaguered chief then wrote to Vaz in February 2015 to say that the investigation into Cliff Richard ‘had increased significantly in size’. This was yet another example of Crompton’s economy with truth: The investigation by then comprised of just three allegations in total, now reduced to two as one of the allegations has proved incapable of substantiation.

There has, to date, still been no arrest or charges brought against the alleged perpetrator in an investigation that now stretches almost into its nineteenth month. It is a shambles and it is not difficult to hypothesise that, ultimately, this will lead to a hugely embarrassing climbdown by Crompton. It would also lead to immediate civil action launched by Richards’ solicitors, Kingsley Napley, who will be seeking a huge sum in damages from South Yorkshire Police on behalf of their client.

At a more basic policing level, South Yorkshire Police under its hapless, hopeless chief constable are a disaster: In October 2014 following freedom of information requests it was discovered that the force has a staggering 75% of its crimes unsolved which begs the question what officers do all day apart from create a villain’s paradise.

Crimes which have not been solved in just the past four years include four murders, 14 attempted murders, 13 child abductions, over 100,000 thefts and 61,320 reports of criminal damage. A full newspaper report on the crisis can be read here. Just two months later, it was revealed in the same newspaper that a staggering 28 murders remain unsolved by SYP and that the force’s cold case review team faced extinction. So, apart from thousands of children being raped, trafficked and tortured in the area for decades there are probably two dozen, or more, murderers running loose on the patch.

Most recently, South Yorkshire Police have come under yet another stinging attack following the publication of a report compiled by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. It finds that, up to June 2015, the force are still letting victims of child sex abuse down. Of 28 investigations examined by HMIC, only 2 (two) were up to scratch. The report (which can be read in full here) is yet another damning indictment of Crompton and the force he commands, including his CSE lead, Ingrid Lee. Calls for Crompton’s resignation have been led by former Sheffield Council leader and now life peer, Lord Scriven.

So, the Teflon Man survived yet anther crisis – and ten years of the most alarming catalogue of quite catastrophic failures both at South Yorkshire Police and, before that, in the West Yorkshire force still see him serving as a police leader. Little wonder that morale in the force is at rock bottom and the rank and file officers are leaving the force in droves, according to local Police Federation chairman, Neil Bowles.

David Crompton has endeared himself little to front line bobbies, almost from the moment he arrived in post as Chief Constable. Within the first two weeks, he had announced a barmy plan to replace all beat constables with community officers, a scheme that was widely condemned by police commentators and senior politicians, which included the Labour leader at the time, Ed Miliband and a former Home Secretary and Sheffield MP, David Blunkett. Crompton excused the fiasco by describing it as ‘a storm in a teacup’ but many viewed it as a clear signposting of the chaotic shambles that has been a feature of his reign, ever since. (The full Daily Mail story on the PCSO plan can be read by clicking here).

But the final nail in the Crompton coffin may come sooner rather than later with the publication of Operation Lamp. An investigation by Greater Manchester Police into widespread corruption in West Yorkshire Police that led to the malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment of one of its own officers (read more here). The man who dismissed ex PC Danny Major (pictured below with father Eric) from the Force in a quite breathtaking kangaroo court was – you’ve guessed it – David Crompton. It may not be the biggest surprise, either, to learn that the man who has advocated on behalf of the Major family for the past three years, and brought about the GMP investigation, is the author of this piece, Neil Wilby.

Danny Major (right) pictured in happier times with father, Eric, at Danny’s wedding.

Page last updated Wednesday 27th April, 2016 at 2220hrs

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Sounds melodramatic, but these are the words to me of a well placed insider about an investigation into the fit-up of an up-and-coming young police officer, by his Leeds Bridewell colleagues, twelve years ago.

That bombshell revelation also fits into my own sphere of knowledge. Which is much more than most, as I was instrumental in setting the Terms of Reference for phase one of the investigation, in my role as complaint advocate to the family of ex-PC Danny Major.

Danny had only one dream as a boy. To follow in the footsteps of his devoted father, Eric, as a career policeman. On my frequent visits to the Major family home I watch Danny’s young nephew play with the toy police cars that have become family heirlooms. Soon Danny’s own bright-as-a-button little boy, Matthew, will be dreaming of driving those same police cars, as he plays with them.

It is a travesty that the conviction against Danny’s name is not yet quashed and relief brought to his inspirational, hard-campaigning mother, Bernadette Major, who has never once doubted, in over twelve years, that her son was innocent.

A trusted and well-liked bobby of the old school, Eric Major retired in 2011 after 31 years exemplary service with West Yorkshire Police. Danny’s own rise through the ranks ended abruptly in 2006 – after only six years – when he was convicted of assaulting a drunken, violent teenager he was attempting to arrest in the centre of Leeds three years earlier. He was subsequently jailed for fifteen months (released after only four) but Danny, a university graduate, feels he is still serving a life sentence as he waits for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to consider his case for a second time.

In November 2006, after three trials, Danny was convicted of actual bodily harm and common assault. He was acquitted of a second assault charge. It was alleged that on 6th September 2003, he arrested Sean Rimmington for being drunk and disorderly while on duty near Millgarth police station. The prosecution claimed that Danny kicked Rimmington twice in the ribs whilst the prisoner was handcuffed in a police van parked in the docking area outside Leeds Bridewell. It was further alleged that Danny removed Rimmington from the van by throwing him head first onto a concrete floor and punching him in the head on at least four occasions.

The Bridewell police station in Leeds City Centre

In the police cell within the Bridewell, the prosecution claimed that he assaulted Rimmington, by punching him five to six times in the face, causing injuries to his nose. Danny says he committed none of the alleged assaults, which either didn’t happen at all or were, instead, committed by other police officers.

Crucially, the police failed to disclose CCTV footage that could have helped Danny’s defence team. It was produced in the final days of third trial when it was too late to be used in court. The footage was subsequently presented to the CCRC, who refused to refer the Major case back to the Court of Appeal on the grounds that it did not materially enhance the defence case at trial and would not be seen as new evidence, or argument.

Danny’s imprisonment was a police trade-off for, what the court heard at the second trial, the concealment of the “shambolic” state of affairs in the Leeds Bridewell custody suite. Judge Linda Sutcliffe QC was not wrong: Amongst the many failings were the falsification of an entire night shift’s custody visiting records, right under one of the CCTV cameras (belatedly disclosed to the Major family) and with running, comedy-act, commentary provided by the officer involved, PC Richard Roberts. Better known to colleagues as ‘Ivan’. A senior PSD detective commented that “there was no proactive supervision” in the Bridewell, which resulted in prisoners not booked in, cell visits not made and others taken to wrong cells. Twelve years after Sean Rimmington received a series of injuries whilst in custody, West Yorkshire Police still have no explanation for concealing the missing 13 hours of CCTV footage that would have cleared Danny Major’s name at Court. Nor have they produced any film from the other five cameras they alleged were not working on that night.

In the hours after the incident, and whilst he was at the city’s St James’s Hospital receiving treatment for injuries inflicted by the prisoner, Danny was accused by another police officer of punching the comatose teenager thus causing his injuries. He was suspended from duty but, he says, was not overly concerned, initially. “The Bridewell has cameras everywhere,” he says. “Alarms go off if film is not in them. It is not somewhere you commit offences. When I heard the allegations I told them: ‘Just look at the CCTV cameras’. Then, my own force’s Professional Standards Department claimed that at least five cameras weren’t recording.”

It was, to say the least, an operational and mathematical improbability that so many cameras had failed on one night in and around the main custody cells in a city the size of Leeds.

The first Danny Major trial was stopped following an abuse of process submission by his defence counsel. There were a number of flaws connected to disclosure of evidential materials to the defence team by the police and CPS – and the Crown’s overall presentation of its case was criticised by the judge. At the second trial, at Bradford Crown Court, the jury heard that officers at Leeds Bridewell failed to follow even basic procedures, as outlined above. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and discharged by Judge Sutcliffe. The third and final trial also saw another circuit judge, the late Roger Scott QC again repeat the view that the custody suite was “a shambles”. He criticised senior police officers, including Detective Inspector Michael Green, and called the Rimmington custody record “a document of fiction”. Perjury, by any other name, once its contents were relied upon, by Green, under oath. Indeed, the judge went on to say further: ‘We saw an unorganised, unsupervised rabble. In my view, it requires further investigation and possible charges against a large number of officers”.

The Leeds Bridewell “Shambles”, as described by Judge Scott in court, was the headline that covered most of the front page of the Yorkshire Evening Post the following day.

Danny was acquitted of assaulting the teenager whilst putting him in the van on a jury count of 12-0. The jury simply did not believe his accuser, PC David Oldroyd. Danny was, however, convicted of assaulting him while taking him out of the van which, once the proximity of another police vehicle in the caged and CCTV’d Bridewell van dock is confirmed, that alleged attack becomes a physical impossibity. He was also convicted, by a majority of 10-2, of the cell assault.

The police’s key witness PC Kevin Liston has now left the force in disgrace, after committing a series of assault/drug/sex based offences before and after the trials. Liston was kept ‘clean’ by the Professional Standards Department (PSD) of West Yorkshire Police, racking up at least twelve serious crimes over a ten year period. That was the price the force had to pay for the lid not coming off the huge cover-up that was in play. Much more can be read about Liston here.

In January 2013, Greater Manchester Police was appointed to review the PSD investigation that led to Danny’s conviction. The codename is Operation Lamp and it began with Superintendent Peter Matthews as Senior Investigation Officer. From Matthews’ first visit to the Major’s home – a meeting at which I was present – the shock at what he and his fellow officer, DC Natalie Kershaw, were seeing, when viewing the evidence for the first time, was palpable.

It was an investigation that was expected to last six months, but the amount of previously undisclosed material, plus the lines of enquiry flowing from that, extended the time required for both the detective work and report writing.

Matthews retired at the end of 2013 and was replaced as SIO by an officer who had worked on the case from the outset, DCI Julian Flindle.

Both Matthews and Flindle – and indeed the rest of the Manchester detectives involved on Lamp – developed a very good rapport with the Major family from the outset, and have been impressed by the sheer scale and reach of Eric Major’s own detective work on the case, before their more formal investigation began.

There has also, clearly, been some behind-the-scenes political wrangling as phase one of the investigation was, to all intents and purposes completed in December 2014. It is expected to at the very least infer, if not expose directly, that the drive to convict, and then remove, Danny Major from the police service extended to the top management of West Yorkshire Police.

David Crompton, the recently suspended and thoroughly disgraced Chief Constable at South Yorkshire Police, was the officer who dismissed Danny at a misconduct hearing following what his mother, Bernadette, described as nothing more than a “kangaroo court”. At the time, Crompton was the infamous Sir Norman Bettison‘s Deputy and, in correspondence between the IPCC Commissioner at the time, Nicholas Long, and the IPCC’s current Senior Oversight Manager Rebecca Reed, it is clear that is was Bettison himself who made the decision to hold misconduct proceedings, before the outcome of Danny Major’s appeal against his conviction had been heard.

Crompton (pictured above) made an excruciating ‘gaffe’ at the opening of the disciplinary hearing that revealed his mind was already made up about dismissing PC Major and the hearing, thereafter, was a sham. It is also clear from the same batch of IPCC documents, to which I have exclusive access, that the hearing itself was potentially unlawful. No appropriate notice had been served on the IPCC by the police, who were yet to determine what disciplinary measures were to be recommended in Danny Major’s case. West Yorkshire Police later claimed – and the IPCC tamely accepted – the S75 notice was “lost in the post”. The two IPCC officers who made this discovery withheld this, and other, crucial information from the Major family for five years. This revelation would appear to seriously compromise the IPCC’s Chair, Anne Owers, who sits as a non-executive director of the CCRC.

One of the most damaging effects of that delay is that the Crown Prosecution Service disposed of their files relating to the three trials that ultimately led to conviction of PC Danny Major, prior to launching of the GMP outside force investigation.

The Operation Lamp report was presented to the Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire, and the Chief Constable, on 11th December, 2015. Mark Burns-Williamson, who for so long frustrated the family’s fight for justice, released this press release shortly afterwards (click here).

Ex DI Michael Green, Ex-PC Kevin Liston and former West Yorkshire Police Band leading light, David Oldroyd (promoted to sergeant immediately after Danny’s conviction at the third trial) are expected to face criminal proceedings, if the report is acted upon appropriately by the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police. Another Band member at the heart of the Major scandal is Force Solicitor, Mike Percival, who has been excluded from any further dealings with the case at the request of the Major family.

The Manchester detectives have also been liaising with the CCRC throughout the investigation and Lamp’s key findings are expected to be presented to them, shortly. The new evidence uncovered should be sufficiently persuasive for the CCRC to refer the matter back to the Court of Appeal for a second time.

Danny Major continues to be represented in his dealings with the CCRC by Maslen Merchant at Hadgkiss, Hughes and Beale, a Birmingham firm of solicitors.

In the meantime, battle is joined with the West Yorkshire PCC, and the force, over the provision to the Major family, as key stakeholders, of an unredacted report to Danny’s solicitor. Given the track record of Mark Burns-Williamson and his Chief Executive, Fraser Sampson, in repeatedly blocking this family’s fight for justice in the years prior to 2013, it is not expected to be easy. It is also noteworthy that Burns-Williamson did not contact any member of the Major family even once, in the period between the referral in January 2013 until the day the report was delivered to him almost three years later.

A redacted version of the Operation Lamp report was made available to the Major family on 29th January, 2016. Channel 4 covered the event with this loop broadcasted on their main evening news slot: click here to view. The interview with Danny Major revealed only what has been known for some years and what I have been publishing for over three years. Curiously, C4 made no comment over the concerns about the referral by Mark Burns-Williamson and the Chief Constable to the IPCC.

Burns-Williamson was expected to announce phase two of the Operation Lamp investigation early in the new year and Greater Manchester Police are keen to take on the task with the same team of detectives who completed phase one. This follow-up investigation should probe the WYP PSD and IPCC cover-up, from 2006 onwards, that prevented the Major family getting justice much earlier than 2016. Instead the referral has been made to the IPCC which will, inevitably, mean another long delay whilst the police watchdog decides how it can best step around the fact that they were an integral part of the problem ten years ago and, of course, ever since. There is also the deeply unhealthy relationship between the Wakefield office of the IPCC and West Yorkshire Police to factor in, which is not at all good news for the Major family.

In the event, the IPCC quickly washed their hands of Operation Lamp and referred it back for ‘local investigation’ and GMP have now been further tasked with investigating ‘whether, in their view, there are any criminal and/or misconduct matters to answer’ according to a statement issued by T/Chief Constable, Dee Collins. Who shares the Command Team table with two officers who must certainly have known of the sustained Danny Major ‘cover-up’ through their senior roles within Professional Standards over the years. They are ACC Andy Battle and ACC Angela Williams. The latter was involved from the outset, dealing with Mrs Major’s original complaints about the crude fit-up of her son by his own police colleagues. Battle was Head of PSD in 2011 to 2012 when PC Kevin Liston was still being ‘protected’ whilst commiting offences.

On a more positive note if, as now seems very likely, Danny Major’s conviction is quashed at the Court of Appeal he will be reinstated in the police service, by right. It his wish that he joins the Manchester force who will have done so much to help that cause.

My own view, and one, I must stress, not shared by the Major family, is that GMP should not have been given the second investigation into the shameful conduct of their West Yorkshire neighbours. They took far too long on the first investigation, without properly explaining why, and with ACC Garry Shewan in charge – a police officer in whom I have absolutely no trust or confidence – there is the ever-present risk of tainting (Shewan is pictured below). I also have good reason to believe that, whilst Shewan is keen to see the Danny Major conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal, he is not a police service boat-rocker and, in my informed view, lacks the stomach to see through a conviction of the perpetrator of the assault on Sean Rimmington in 2003. Unless and until that happens, Danny’s name will not be cleared.

My choice for phase two of Operation Lamp would be Devon and Cornwall Police, who conducted an investigation in 2013 which was codenamed Operation Garnett (read the redacted report here). This also concerned deep-seated corruption within WYP’s Professional Standards Department dating back to 2006 and was brought about following complaints by a retired Northumbria Police officer, Supt Trevor Fordy. All Mr Fordy’s complaints were upheld by the Devon force and some of the discredited officers were common to both the Garnett and Lamp investigations. Notably, ex-Supt Trevor Kerry. As an experienced major crimes SIO, Mr Fordy’s best collar was Curtis ‘Cocky’ Warren, the infamous Liverpool drug baron who was, reportedly at the time of his sentencing, the country’s biggest ever drug dealer.

There is also the spectre of two outside force investigations and a Metropolitan Police ‘peer review’ into alleged corruption within the Professional Standards department at Manchester which, on the face of documents I have seen, may involve both Shewan and DCI Flindle.

Aidan Kielty, a former GMP Police Federation official, now turned whistleblower, made some startling revelations to the BBC on this topic in September, 2015. Read more here. His views reinforce my own, insofar as the Major case would be best served well away from GMP, once all the implications from phase one of Operation Lamp have been dealt with. Mr Kielty was interviewed as a potential witness in a recent BBCFile on 4 broadcast featuring the GMP scandal, but was edited out due to time constraints. There is a curious symmetry here as it was co-producer of the GMP programme, Sally Chesworth, whose views on the merits of the Danny Major case were one of the keys in forcing the Operation Lamp enquiry to be opened. The full GMP File on 4 podcast is available here.

However, the Danny Major scandal is a story that still has some way to run, and with the sensational collapse of the high profile Dennis Slade murder re-trial in November 2015, together with the Inspector Keith Boots alleged £1million drugs theft trial due to commence in January, 2016 it leaves the beleaguered West Yorkshire Police facing three more huge corruption scandals, to add to an already bulging tally.

With the next PCC elections due on 5th May, 2016, will beleagured Burns-Williamson be sticking to his 2012 election mantra? “There is no corruption in West Yorkshire Police”